you know, it must be used to be effective, like how old are multi cpu/threads
when where they where actually implemented in daws

 

Buy a 7950X, put the 9950X in a display case, remind yourself of the consequences of your early adaptor's hubris every time you walk past!

 

Hmmm. I will put aside whatever offensive you didn't say haha, as like many others, you seem to not understand exactly what L3 cache is good for and what not. Now i have tested the 5800X3D thoroughly. The simple 5800X was about 10-20% faster in most cases.
As i mentioned, audio apps cannot benefit as much from the extra cache as they have very few ways to use it.
The L3 cache in a cpu stores data and makes it available for the cpu when needed without the cpu having to communicate with the system's ram. A big L3 like in X3D cpus will store much more chunks of data. With that said, that data has to be accessed to be stored in the first place. I am not aware or noticed X3D's L3 cache working alongside some prediction algorithm so anything you click will be magically available. (EDIT: this may exclude any Windows features & programs loading with prefetch and the likes.) The cpu always goes to ram first for anything new loaded.
In the case of memory intensive instruments like Kontakt, you will see a noticeable improvement, but since the loading times depend heavily on ram and L1 cache and fast disk drives and not data stored in L3, as each time you load something new this hasn't been stored in L3, the trade off for the slower burst and max clock frequency against the non X3D variant cpu is not worth it. In Kontakt, X3D shines with libraries like the ones from Output where a huge data set is loaded once containing all presets and then presets can be loaded much faster than most traditional libraries which everytime they need the user to load a new sound from disk to ram.
To put it in numbers you will win 10% in Virtual instruments and you will lose about 15-20% in DSP. Which means faster frequency and burst boost wins my friend. And by all means, don't take my word for it as i might be full of shite haha.
Here from scanproaudio.co.uk :
"For purely an audio-centric setup where the DAW software will be spreading the load, the testing showed up frequency over cache as the best default setting, with the DSP testing returning up to 20% more performance and the VI test a more modest but not insubstantial 10%."
You have a nice day
EDIT2: Referring to L3 cache as cache is misleading. It's not L1 or even L2. If it was L1 or L2 we wouldn't be having this conversation as L1 is the closest to the core and fastest of all 3 different types of cache, with L3 being the further away from the cores and the slowest one. While L1 can be up to 100 times faster than the main system DRAM since it's SRAM, L3 is about twice as fast the DRAM itself.

 

Last edited: Oct 21, 2024

The voltage he is referring to is for the chipset to feed the USB, rather than anything to do with the CPU or RAM for overclocking.

My system has 96Gb (2x48GB) DDR5 RAM running at 6000MT/s without issue. Not tried to overclock the CPU at all.

 

I think I’m now contemplating returning the 9950X and the MSI X870 MPG Carbon WiFi as neither work as intended at the moment. My next decision is what to buy as a replacement.
Any recommendation from the original post in terms of which is the best way to go for a mostly music production system with some casual gaming too?

 

Last edited: Oct 21, 2024

For anyone in a similar situation, this morning I've had a Customer Service response from MSI who have confirmed the 1.2.0.2A microcode will fix the iLok issues and will be in the next BIOS update due to be released shortly. I imagine it will be similar for other motherboard manufacturers.

 

Last edited: Oct 21, 2024

Well this is about to change very soon. All upcoming 9000 series X3D cpus will be unlocked. The new design by AMD places the L3 cache under the cpu cores making it easier to cool, so the restrictions with boost and max clocks that were hard built in the previous X3D cpus are now lifted, and those cpus are expected to perform just like their non X3D counterparts but better of course! I hope they iron out the bugs of the Zen 5 platform soon enough because this is hot!
Cheers

 

The main issue with X3D is that the predictive loading of the cache is hard-coded, both chip side and software side. Music production is a bit too varied for AMD to bother adding instructions that detect that sort of workload (effectively) and load the cache accordingly, and music software developers haven't bothered with it either, likely due to the overwhelming number of plugins, the fact that this burden would be on DAW developers, and the fact that it sounds to me like a lot of work for something they can't directly monetize.